1910 #2
“Why do you want the factory so badly?” Opal said. “You’ve seen it yourself. The heat. The noise. The machinery is ancient. Just last week one of the girls nearly cut off her finger on the slicing machine when a bolt loosened. And the workers, half of them are sick.”
“Sick from work.” Bertie laughed. “Now you sound like Dixie Ellison.”
Last week Betsy had come to see her in the lunchroom.
I feel strange, she’d said. While they sat together, Opal felt the woman’s driving pulse.
Is it the baby? Opal had asked. Betsy shrugged; her cheeks had rounded out, her belly, too.
For a moment, I was standing there, and I didn’t feel real, Betsy said.
Lightheaded? Opal asked. Betsy nodded, then shaded her eyes and squinted, like it was too bright in the dim room.
Opal helped her to sit. You’re real, see?
Then she pinched the skin at the base of Betsy’s palm, but the woman did not flinch.
Afterward, she’d given Betsy some more Comet Pills, and she didn’t charge her the customary fifty cents.
“My father was a great defender of the women’s cause,” Bertie said. “He believed what women needed most was to work. Industry. That’s the great equalizer.”
But Opal had worked all her life, hadn’t she?
Even before she’d made a single dollar of her own.
She had spent hours of her life toiling in the kitchen making goulash or mincemeat pie.
How she loathed cooking and scouring the pans afterward; how her stomach pitched at the flotsam that rose to the top of the dishwater that Opal had to skim off with a strainer so she wouldn’t clog the sink.
“And yet you want us to walk off the job? It makes no sense.”
“Just temporarily. Just until I can prove this pregnancy will take, until I’m further along.
Charles can’t sell a soap factory on strike.
Nobody would want to be associated with it.
Poor publicity, angry women, all that, not to mention what it could do to the brand.
The newspapers would be all over it. Front-page material. ”
Opal couldn’t risk her picture in the paper again—not with Jagr looking for her now. “They won’t do it,” Opal said. “They need their jobs. We all do.”
“Think about it: You girls could improve your position. A calculated risk. Look at these women in New York. They negotiated higher wages. Nearly double!”
“And better work conditions,” Opal added. “No exploding boilers or unbolted machines.”
“Now,” said Bertie, as thought they had settled the matter.
“You have my word. If you convince the girls to strike, afterward, I’ll inspect every square inch of this place, and make improvements, even if I have to do it with my own two hands.
” Bertie pinned her hat and readied to leave.
“From the start I suspected you were different. Ambitious.” She offered an approving look, then picked up her bag.
“We could help each other,” she said. “What is it you really want?”
That question again. Opal stood now and straightened her apron. Wasn’t this just another way of asking: Who are you? And what are you willing to do to become her? Wasn’t Bertie just daring her to say it out loud? And what if she did?
I want the Dowd money, she might have said.
But that wasn’t quite right. I want to go to France, she could have said.
Or, I want to save this baby. Or, I want a different life.
Or, I want what I want. I want to be able to want.
Now that was closer to the truth, but she couldn’t quite put it to words.
Plus, the women weren’t intimate enough for that kind of conversation.
“I want a space of my own,” Opal said. “A place to work. Spirit work.” In a single week, the Dowd order had already doubled.
She hadn’t the space. Her kitchen was cluttered with glass dishes and bowls and botanicals strung from twine with clothespins to dry.
The pots were at a constant boil, decocting roots and herbs.
And recently, her landlord had given her that final warning.
Her rented rooms reeked of sulfur and soured wine and something pungent and medicinal.
The neighbors had complained again. The scent of it kept even her awake at night, her baby enhancing all her senses.
Bertie suggested the old testing laboratories at the Earthshine Factory.
She knew the building’s layout—and a better, more private way in, she’d explained.
She led Opal outside into the sunlight, then across the street to a stout annex building where they stored maintenance supplies.
Bertie took Opal down a set of stairs and through the old tunnel so they wouldn’t be seen, lagering tunnels that once served to cool beer when the factory was a brewery, before her family owned it.
Beer caves, she’d called them. The beer cave was chilly, with brick archways tall enough for transporting casks.
Two lamps were plenty to illuminate the way.
Old barrels were stacked along the sides, like forgotten trunks in the hold of a ship.
They arrived at the base of a slat-wood staircase.
Upstairs, Opal found herself in a square room where she’d never been, a separate entrance from the one she used, all the way on the other side of the factory.
A memorabilia room of some sort. A small sign, a replica of one that hung over the city, bore the company name: EARTHSHINE SOAP.
Advertisements lined the walls. Women in kitchens.
Women in aprons. Women in sudsy bathtubs with long-handled brushes.
SO CLEAN, one read, against an illustration of a woman radiating beams of light from her skin, HE’LL SEE YOU FROM MILES AWAY.
“That sounds like an advertisement for a telescope,” Opal said.
Soon they arrived at their destination, and Bertie turned on the light; a naked bulb hung from a wire, which now illuminated the laboratory.
Light reflected orange on the glass beakers, glass bowls, glass measures of varying sizes.
In the back, three large vats looked like giant metal mixing bowls, paddles and all.
Opal spun in slow circles. She took quick inventory of the shelves: Reduction pans.
Bunsen burners. Balance scale. A pill press.
Mortar and pestle. Small tins and overwrap.
String. Clamps. Pipettes. “And your husband won’t mind? ” Opal asked.
The corners of Bertie’s mouth tucked, just slightly. Sudsy had found them, and now he licked her hand that she held out toward him to be kissed. “I’ve asked him to stay away from the factory for the time being. Charles can do that much for me.”
“I see.”
“There’s no need for it, really. He has a foreman, managers, all that. Besides, if he’s so ambitious, he should focus on publicity. The look of things. We haven’t told anyone yet about the baby, but when the world finds out, what will it look like? A working girl.”
THE LUNCHROOM HAD NEVER ACCOMMODATED so many Earthshine Girls at once. A body occupied every chair, every space against the wall. Some made seats of the tables.
So many bodies heated the room. Opal wished for water; she was endlessly thirsty. She lit the candles she’d brought from home. She adjusted herself in her chair. The small of her back ached from all the standing. The baby tired her easily, but she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t get comfortable.
She closed her eyes and remembered watching Madame de Fleur in her tent at the circus.
Once she sat silent for a full ten minutes, so long that people began leaving, suspecting she’d fallen asleep.
The stage manager tapped her shoulder, and Madame de Fleur woke with a banshee howl.
She howled so long and with such a feral force that many in the audience covered their ears.
Some left. Opal moved closer to the woman and felt vibrations rattle her insides, like she was standing in front of a train.
“Why are we here?” Betsy now shouted. She nervously smoothed her bangs.
At that moment, a rapping sound. The room collectively inhaled, exhaled. Then, silence. Opal stretched out her foot until she could feel the string she’d affixed to the bottom of the table, the weight of the apple holding it taut. Two knockings, the thump of the apple bouncing against the wall.
Opal began to hum. The rapping continued, louder, so Opal lifted her voice. “He communes with me directly. One knock means yes, two means no. Ask of him what you wish.” Opal positioned her leg just so.
“Are you a ghost?” Maria asked. Knock.
“Are you real?” Amanda shouted toward the ceiling. Knock.
“Are you of this world?” Knock knock.
“Were you ever alive?” Knock.
“Do any of us know who you are?” Knock.
“Are you my mother?” Betsy said. She covered her eyes, as though she didn’t wish to know the answer. Knock. Knock. “Thank goodness,” she replied, and everyone laughed.
“Then who?” No knocking now, only silence.
“Now I’d like for everyone to join hands,” Opal commanded.
“Please, hurry.” The women quickly outstretched their arms and formed a large circle that spanned the room.
Some women closed their eyes. Opal thought of the Shirtwaist Strike again, of the workers in their coats overlaid with sashes.
PICKET LADIES TAILORS STRIKERS. They linked arms like a human chain. Look at all they had gained!
The Earthshine workers held the room in silence.
Their eyes were closed, and Opal imagined them sleeping, for what is sleep but daily surrender, the hope you’ll get back all you let go.
She relaxed her body. She imagined her skin unbuttoning, like a corset, until she could breathe more freely.
She tried to remember the sound of Madame de Fleur’s voice, her habit of clicking her tongue.
She clicked her tongue now, too. Her baby seemed to respond to this, offering her a firm kick.